


West of the Sun East of the Moon

by slytherinbitch



Category: Naruto
Genre: Drama, F/F, Fem!Sasuke, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Rule 63, fem!naruto, lgbtqa+, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 04:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7997830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slytherinbitch/pseuds/slytherinbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Izanami has always been a pawn, a two-dimensional chess board piece subject to her player's flights of fancy.  But this choice here, now... It will be entirely her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	West of the Sun East of the Moon

Izanami is seven; self-conscious, talented, overshadowed, happy.  Izanami is seven, and her life begins.

 

Izanami is seven; traumatized, tired, afraid, and so so angry.  Izanami is seven, with a goal, with an ambition, with an obsession, that she will never let go.

 

Izanami is six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and she loves her brother more than anything in the world.  She hates him just as much but that never erases the godhood she can see in his shadow.  It never changes the all-consuming desire that lives within her to possess him, to surpass him, to consume him.  

 

Izanami is ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen -and her plans are finally coming to fruition.  Soon, she will be strong; strong where she was once weak; soon, she will kill that man- and she knows just what she needs to do to achieve her ends.  To finally, finally, put her family to rest.  And maybe to earn a bit of rest for herself at the end of it all too.  

 

Izanami is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, with her best friend's blood all over her hands.  Every time she looks down, she sees it; dripping from between her tightly clenched fists.  Sometimes when she looks, she sees Naruko’s heart squeezed between her bloody, bloody, hands as well.  She knows, of course, that she didn’t really kill Naruko.  She knows, logically that is, that Naruko is still alive, but still, soon enough, she stops looking down at all.  

 

Izanami is sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and her world is ending.  For ten years, she built her existence on a foundation of lies, threw everything away for the chance to slaughter the brother she hated and loved and obsessed over.  To avenge her clan, to avenge herself, to calm the raging sea of unbridled anger that churned inside her soul.  And she has failed.  Now, even in the face (the aftermath) of his death; her rage, her beautiful, ugly, incandescent, rage has only reached new heights as it searched for new targets to unleash itself upon.  For if she can’t have her rest she’ll make damn sure no one else can have it either.

 

Izanami is eighteen, nineteen, twenty and finally, she has nothing to do.  No goals, no ambitions, no desperate struggles for life, no pulse-pounding search for truth in a liar's world.  The fire burning brightly in her soul has died, has left behind only the ashes of old hopes and dreams, of old failures and accomplishments now.  And so she wanders.  She wanders through her clan's empty ghost town, then through the bustling, industrious, damaged streets of the village her brother so loved, that her clan sought to betray, and then, finally, through herself.  And as for what she sees… well, that is for her, and only her, to know. 

  
Izanami twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three and finally she is healthy.  She is not a forest fire or a barren ash filled desert or a tumultuous gathering of storm clouds.  Not any longer.  Now Izanami is a person, a woman, a kunoichi, a shinobi.  A warrior, a weapon, without a purpose, without a cause, and now, for the first time in her life, she is free to be and do as she wishes.  And so she turns her back on the setting sun and she turns her face from the rising moon and instead looks at Naruko.  Her best friend, her other half, her spirit sister, and blood-sworn nakama.  And she falls in love.  And no matter what her clan would have thought of it -no matter what her coworkers and her hair stylist and the random people on the street have to say about it- it is a decision she never, not even once, regrets. 


End file.
